No, I think the original MMO's WERE casual games. A typical night in UO could be spent in a guild tavern, doing nothing but sitting around and telling stories with guildmates.

Yeah, last night in Champions Online, after questing and cage match, I went into a disco. Aside from one player with all the broken imbalanced abilities challenging me to a duel, it was just a good old-fashioned disjointed and chaotic chat room while my superhero danced on the floor. I was surprised Blizzard never came up with that, and I don't mean Barren's Chat.

No, I think the original MMO's WERE casual games. A typical night in UO could be spent in a guild tavern, doing nothing but sitting around and telling stories with guildmates.

Yeah, last night in Champions Online, after questing and cage match, I went into a disco. Aside from one player with all the broken imbalanced abilities challenging me to a duel, it was just a good old-fashioned disjointed and chaotic chat room while my superhero danced on the floor. I was surprised Blizzard never came up with that, and I don't mean Barren's Chat.

Pocket D in City of Heroes was built on that concept. There was Disco nights AFAICR.

Agree totally. Anyone who "completes" an MMO has missed the entire point.

What is the point, exactly? I've just read a page full of differing ideals regarding MMOs, and a good article forwarding another viewpoint. I would argue that there is no concrete "point" that we can strive towards, as every option or implementation comes with its own problems and ultimately leaves one or several groups out in the cold.

For example, someone mentioned a two-tiered parallel system, which sounds nice but has so many inherent flaws. Segregation of "casual" and "hardcore" by some contrived means is a dangerous path; what happens if a casual gamer wishes to become "hardcore"? Could a "hardcore" gamer regress to meet IRL demands yet still enjoy the game?

My personal opinion is that games must strive to be themselves, create a compelling environment and worthwhile challenges, then allow players to do what they will with that. If your game is hard intentionally, maintain that, if very easily accessible, stay as you are. Correct only imbalances which harm the gameplay experience, but don't pander to those who whinge, no matter how loudly. The term "nerfing" is born from palyers whining that their class has been kneecapped by changes, so better planning and less tinkering should be a watchword.

The reality is that in these highly competitive times developers have to push ahead with flawed designs or concepts and pray that the patches/updates/expansions will provide them the opportunity to fix them, so my points are largely moot. That said, the greatest gift deveopers can give to players is freedom...

My personal opinion is that games must strive to be themselves, create a compelling environment and worthwhile challenges, then allow players to do what they will with that. If your game is hard intentionally, maintain that, if very easily accessible, stay as you are. Correct only imbalances which harm the gameplay experience, but don't pander to those who whinge, no matter how loudly. The term "nerfing" is born from palyers whining that their class has been kneecapped by changes, so better planning and less tinkering should be a watchword.

Again, this is a good set of ideas that seem to be ignored by the latest MMO developers. Why should MMO's be kept casual friendly? Why can't they be gamer friendly?

The reality is that in these highly competitive times developers have to push ahead with flawed designs or concepts and pray that the patches/updates/expansions will provide them the opportunity to fix them, so my points are largely moot. That said, the greatest gift deveopers can give to players is freedom...

But they don't, do they? They create "The Next WoW Killer" and fail, because WoW is not the best game ever made. It's just the most popular and that's got little to do with whether you can reach 99% of all the areas.

In fact, from my limited understanding, you can't. There's just a set path to rush to 60, that's why the gold farmers love it so.

Cousin_IT:EVE is only punishing if you take the pixels seriously. Otherwise, its just a bit frustrating

I tended to use the word boring instead of frustrating. For a guy who gets a boner anytime an astrophysicist that is quite a feat to make something about space boring to me.

As for casual gaming. I don't really think casual exists.

I think basically you have games that are built for fun and games that are built for tedium that some folks find fun.

Now I tend to fit under both groups. I do play some tedious games that are fun but I also really enjoy games that are just fun.

In fact I find I enjoy fun games far more than tedious games.

But then again perhaps I'm just looking at semantics. But for me any kind of recreation is a casual experience. I don't care if you get paid for it, it still comes off to me as casual, yes...I'm looking at you Major League Baseball players...you are fooling nobody.

My personal opinion is that games must strive to be themselves, create a compelling environment and worthwhile challenges, then allow players to do what they will with that. If your game is hard intentionally, maintain that, if very easily accessible, stay as you are. Correct only imbalances which harm the gameplay experience, but don't pander to those who whinge, no matter how loudly. The term "nerfing" is born from palyers whining that their class has been kneecapped by changes, so better planning and less tinkering should be a watchword.

The reality is that in these highly competitive times developers have to push ahead with flawed designs or concepts and pray that the patches/updates/expansions will provide them the opportunity to fix them, so my points are largely moot. That said, the greatest gift deveopers can give to players is freedom...

This is the conundrum the developers and publishers run into.

Do we make our game for the niche, or do we make our game for the mainstream?

I'm sure the publishers would like to see more profitability out of making a mainstream game. The developers, obviously, want to create what they have envisioned their game to be, niche or otherwise. (See, Brad McQuaid and Vanguard for an example of Dev v. Publisher)

World of Warcraft is an oddity in the MMO market. It's why no other MMO will topple it.

This is why I'd rather see MMO's continue to cater to niche markets and cater to them well rather than attempt to make a game for everyone. Other than WoW, every other single MMO out there is niche.

My personal opinion is that games must strive to be themselves, create a compelling environment and worthwhile challenges, then allow players to do what they will with that. If your game is hard intentionally, maintain that, if very easily accessible, stay as you are. Correct only imbalances which harm the gameplay experience, but don't pander to those who whinge, no matter how loudly. The term "nerfing" is born from palyers whining that their class has been kneecapped by changes, so better planning and less tinkering should be a watchword.

Again, this is a good set of ideas that seem to be ignored by the latest MMO developers. Why should MMO's be kept casual friendly? Why can't they be gamer friendly?

Are casual players not gamers?

The reality is that in these highly competitive times developers have to push ahead with flawed designs or concepts and pray that the patches/updates/expansions will provide them the opportunity to fix them, so my points are largely moot. That said, the greatest gift deveopers can give to players is freedom...

But they don't, do they? They create "The Next WoW Killer" and fail, because WoW is not the best game ever made. It's just the most popular and that's got little to do with whether you can reach 99% of all the areas.

In fact, from my limited understanding, you can't. There's just a set path to rush to 60, that's why the gold farmers love it so.[/quote]

I'd disagree on that. Personally, I DO think WoW is the best-designed MMOG ever made. Sure, some games do other things better and excel in niche areas, but from an overall quality point of view WoW is really head and shoulders above the rest in terms of doing everything competently.

And no, there's actually no set path to 60-70-80. They do very well at GUIDING you on a path, but you're free to deviate from that at any time.

The idea of having a "casual" gamer makes me bristle like Kierkegaard. Would you change freeways to work better with "casual" drivers? Or should they just be for hardcore drivers?

Personally, I DO think WoW is the best-designed MMOG ever made.

I disagree, but I can see your point. WoW feels like it's a world responsive to pop-culture in the real world so it's less of a world to me and more of a mirror.

Perhaps that's why it does so well, but it's why it gets so much ire from the people who don't like it, and why people are so vehement that all MMOs shouldn't go that way. It's not about hardcore versus casual imho, it's the HALO syndrome where people start stating that WoW is the only way to go because it invented MMOs.

I used to play Runescape back in the day. (Please don't flame me!). But the point is that when you died, everything but your 3 most expensive items dropped. When you were fighting stuff in 'high level' dungeons, every now and then some poor unprepared sod died and you made a killing. But there was also the element of risk that meant you could lose your stuff too. Then they decided to 'remove RMT trading' by removing any and all chance of ever losing anything. Man was I annoyed. It seemed to have no point if you advanced at a linear rate, with no risk of being set back, and no chance of unexpected massive gain.Unsurprisingly, I eventually made my way into EVE. :D

squid5580:And cue the "casual gamers are dooming the industry" posts. I think this is where the implemation of achievement points and trophies really shines as a great idea. The casual gamer can play the game on easy while the more talented player can play it on impossible and they are rewarded. While not taking any content away from the casual gamer.

But what about people like me who can't play games like WoW and EQ because we think they are where gamers go to die yet are SO hard core we have tones of trophies and know its just a game so we don't get angry? lol. My buddies hardcore in the fact that if his grenade doesn't kill something he FREAKS lol.

I avoided the word "hardcore" and replaced it with talented for this exact reason. If you have a ton of trophies it doesn't make you hardcore. What about the person who spends 20 hours a day playing 1 game. Does that mean they are less "hardcore" than you because obviously they wouldn't have nearly as many trophies?

true but i have plenty of trophies cause im a perfectionist when it comes to gaming. you know have a character in Fallout 3 when the DLC comes out 100 in all skills kinda way lol. Buddy calls me a twink or whatever for it lol.

As far as challenge in video games goes, I don't have a problem with challenging games, and I don't have problems with games were my character may die while playing a boss. Heck, when I'm playing old-school NES games to review for my blog, I die a lot (the satellite boss on Metal Storm nearly drove me nuts), but I enjoyed the game. For a more recent example, I died fairly often on Max Payne, on CoD4, and The Matrix: Path of Neo, but I enjoyed the game.

What I don't like is situations where, say, I basically run into a brick wall. In a MMO it could be having my character be set back several days/weeks/months of play because I died and someone ganked an item off my corpse, or someone ripped me off of several months works of in-game cash that I'd been saving up for a new ship, or something similar. Or, for that matter, using a non-MMO example (one I've used before), in Need For Speed: Carbon - my upgraded halfway-to-hell-and-back Aston Martin that I'd been using for most of the game got impounded, because the game hands out Get Out Of Jail Free cards and other wanted rating reducing items so sparingly (as opposed to Most Wanted were you got them regularly as I went up the blacklist.)

Now, if this had come up later, this wouldn't have been as major of a problem, as I'd been saving up for a car from the next tier up, and some upgrades for that so it would be competitive. But it didn't. So, all I had at the moment was my starting car, and a car I'd gotten from an earlier boss, neither of which were competitive in the races I hadn't gone through yet, even with Rubber Band AI. Yes, I could have gone through the races I'd already beaten, but the payouts were low enough that it would become a horrific grind, one that would not be fun - so I stopped playing, and I've started choosing my future racing game purchases to avoid similar problems, and if I start getting into MMO's more heavily (I'm currently playing DDO and Neo Steam), I'll make my decision in terms of the pay MMOs on (among other things) the same basis.